Wheat’s political blame game

Politics seems to have gotten the better of the wheat market in Pakistan. Political preferences have been ruling pricing policy for the last two months, and of late, even the position of stocks is interpreted through a political prism. The rulers, impervious to market consequences and beholden to their party politics, are playing an acrimonious blame game that is adding fuel to the flour price fire. The politics, however, goes on. The latest example came last week when Chief Minister Parvez Elahi publicly took on Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif during a media talk in Lahore. He criticised the federal failure to supply or grant import permission for wheat, terming this act as (political) enmity against the people of Punjab. In the next 48 hours, he wrote a formal letter to the prime minister and demanded one million tonnes of wheat, one-third immediately, and the rest spread over the next few months. Interestingly, the chief minister’s latest demand for a million tonnes contradicts the stand taken by his Food Department in the last few weeks. In a number of correspondences, which the chief minister mentioned in the letter as well, the department had asked for only half of it. Why the chief minister doubled the demand?